


Epiphany

by SegaBarrett



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Depression, Gen, Loneliness, Prison, Solitary Confinement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 17:17:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12215316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Faith, on the inside.





	Epiphany

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anysin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anysin/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy, and I make no money from this.

She could say that she felt like a caged dog, but no, it was so much more than that. She had been around dogs before, and the idea was to teach them to respect their crates, to take care of the little boxes that humans insisted on pushing them inside.

Faith did not respect her crate. Nor did she respect her cage-mate. At least dogs were not usually shoved into crates two at a time. 

Her roommate was curly-haired and spoke with a thick New York accent. Another Northeaster let loose in the great city of Los Angeles, a pair of bosom buddies.   
Except for the fact that the girl – her name was Elona, stupid name, Faith hated it – was obsessed with the idea of proving to everyone that she was the baddest bitch inside. 

The first night Faith had walked into the cell, she had climbed up to the top bunk and unceremoniously plopped down, intending to close her eyes and rest (not sleep, of course, but rest a spell – funny phrase). As soon as her lids began to shut, she had heard a noise.

“Hey, bitch!”

Faith groaned and peeked down.

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you!”

Faith rolled her eyes. This was all she needed. She had enough soul-searching going on in her head without some idiot trying to start a fight that Faith knew she would win.

“Listen,” Faith said, “I’m going to give you some free advice. ‘Cause it looks like no one ever gave you anything, looking at that hair you have.”

Not her best insult but, sue her, she was tired.

“Come fight me!” Elona declared. “I’ll pull your hair out and then piss on you!”

Faith laughed. 

“That’s a new one. Points for creativity, kid.”

“I’ll kill you,” Elona snarled.

“I’d like to hear something new. Do you care to give some more examples?”

Elona jumped, grabbing a hold of the metal edge of Faith’s bunk. It had been a bad idea to make them like this, Faith mused – it was going to be a hell of a lot easier to end this fight if she really, really wanted to.

And the old Faith would have really wanted to. She would have reveled in it, would have felt a surge of glory for being able to best any little bitch who dared to challenge her, dared to try and be as good as her. 

But then she would have felt a burning, soaring, scratching emptiness, the kind of feeling where something isn’t right but it’s impossible to know just what and it drives a person mad like a beating heart underneath a floorboard. As if something will come barreling down from the skies, a raven or a crow, and come and scoop you away and the reason would be that you weren’t ready.

Faith had promised herself that she would always be ready.

***

The little firecracker; that had been what they’d called her. Had it been in affection or mockery? She wasn’t sure, not anymore. Maybe no one had ever wanted her, and that was okay, because she had been called, goddamnit, called to be something better than all of them. And maybe she had lost that a little, maybe she had – but was it her fault?

Buffy had told her a little bit about the slayer she’d replaced. Kendra something, tall and dark and utterly devoted to the cause, growing up in it. Once, Faith would have thought that sounded lonely, but maybe it was better. Too many distractions made it… made it complicated. Too complicated, too murky. 

Everything had been swimming around in Faith’s head for far too long. She felt too young to be too many things, to try to figure it all out. And no one had ever helped her then, so what the hell would she expect anything now, when she was trapped behind metal, sliding doors?

Not like she couldn’t just walk out at any time. 

Not like anyone had actual control over her. She was five-by-five at all times, always was, always had to be.

Why had she done it? Why had she done any of it?

She was bad, bad, bad… the voice kept ringing in her head. Whose voice? Her own?

Maybe she should just give into the bad and kill this girl. She would be the dictionary definition of “had it coming”. How stupid could this girl be, picking a fight with a slayer? Shouldn’t there be some kind of cosmic “don’t fuck with me” energy wafting off of Faith to tell these idiots to give it a rest? And if there wasn’t, was that Faith’s problem?

Maybe it should just be another body to add to the pile, more blood to wash from her hands. She could almost taste it… Biting into the girl’s neck, tearing her skin, throwing her against the door. Maybe she could rip her hair out, leave bruises all over, leave her there for them to find in the morning. She could just stand over her, laughing, and they would never be dumb enough to give her a cellmate ever again.

The girl was still yelling – what was her name again? Faith couldn’t remember, couldn’t be bothered to remember – and Faith was beginning to get bored. That was a dangerous place to be. 

Faith began to laugh, a chuckle really, low and deep and getting away from her, slipping out of her hands. 

“What the fuck are you laughing at?”

That was the girl – what was her name again? Faith had already pushed it out of her mind. She was insignificant. She was like an ant on the sidewalk, an annoyance for Faith to stop on and rub her heel over.

If she wanted to… The question was if she wanted to.

She hopped down from the bunk and in the time that it took the girl to open her mouth in a wordless scream, Faith had snapped her hand in two.

She let go of her and watched as she crumpled on the floor.

***

She wiped a stubborn tear away from her face. It made her eyes sting – stupid crying, always made her hurt. That was why, long ago, she had chosen never to do it. Not when she was hurt, not when she was sad (Sad? Like she would acknowledge that!), not when it would be to her advantage to cry, like when she was at her sentencing. 

So why was she crying now? How had her mind gotten all stupid once she got in here, where there were no windows and no walls? 

She couldn’t hear anyone in here – the walls were too thick, and maybe that was the idea. Maybe they didn’t want anyone figuring out ways to communicate with each other; then this particular punishment would have gone and lost all of its flavor.

She tapped her nails against the wall, anyway, wondering if super-strength would change the fact that she was trapped inside this box. 

Unless she wanted to dig through it and come out the other end. Come out to what, though? Come out to who, exactly?

She collapsed back down on her tailbone in frustration. What was she even supposed to do in here, and how long would she be stuck in here?

Wasn’t this the way people started to lose their minds? Being cut off from any sound apart from the beating of her own heart and buzz of her own breath, being cut off from any smell apart from the endless reek of paint. They must paint this room pretty regularly – Faith did not want to think about what had necessitated these remodelings.

She would need to find a way to keep her mind sharp, to figure out whatever she was supposed to come up with her. To find a reason. Maybe there was a way that fate had settled on to her for all this, a way that wrote a different story for her ending. The one she’d been seeing in her head since she was called had been one marked in blood-red chalk against concrete, dead, dead, dead like Kendra and like whoever had come before Buffy and dead like the hundreds of slayers who would come after her.

She wouldn’t be the first to have gone bad, either, the first to have gotten over-ripe and rotten. Whoever kept track of these things (the Watchers, she presumed, they had books on everything after all) must know what the full number was.

But how many had come back from the brink?

She pressed her head against the wall and began to count down from one hundred.

_There’s a first time for everything._


End file.
